WTF, Central Bucks

In one of the country's premier school board battle grounds, voters just ousted a right-wing board. In its final act, the board awarded a controversial superintendent $700,000.

One of the nation’s most hotly contested school board battlegrounds turned blue this month, with voters moving to oust a hard-right board in favor of an all-Democratic lineup.

But in its final actions, the outgoing board of Pennsylvania’s Central Bucks School District awarded a $700,000 payday to a superintendent who has backed some of their most controversial policies. 

Pennsylvania—particularly the Philadelphia suburbs of Bucks County—is ground zero for far-right education groups like Moms for Liberty, which have used school board politics to mobilize Republican voters in the swing state. In 2021, Moms for Liberty claimed to have seated 33 candidates on Bucks County school boards (more on that in my post-election breakdown here). In school board elections this month, Bucks County voters offered a forceful rejection of the right, with Democrats in the Central Bucks School District sweeping a school board that had previously made headlines for anti-LGBTQ+ policies.

The district’s Republican board members aren’t the only to leave after the election. Less than a week after the race, Central Bucks superintendent Abram Lucabaugh announced his sudden resignation. In one of its final actions, the Republican-majority board voted to award Lucabaugh a reported severance package of more than $700,000.

The move has sparked outrage locally. But it’s also an omen for the right, in a district that has served as a bellwether for the country’s school board politics.

In December 2021, just months after Lucabaugh became superintendent, the New York Times presented Central Bucks as a case study in the newly vitriolic school board politics sweeping the country after a return from remote learning.

“Parents and other residents took turns standing before the board,” the Times reported, “speaking about Zionism, Maoism, slavery, freedom, the Holocaust, critical race theory, the illegality of mask requirements, supposed Jewish ties to organized crime and the viral falsehood that transgender students were raping people in bathrooms.”

That meeting was the first after a slate of right-wing candidates won school board elections, propelled to victory by PAC money and attack ads. As Lucabaugh’s tenure progressed, the Republican-majority district passed multiple policies prohibiting teachers from calling students by their preferred names and pronouns without parental approval, banning transgender students from playing on sports teams that align with their gender, and barring staff from displaying Pride flags in school. (The board classified Pride symbols as “advocacy activity” on par with flying “Blue Lives Matter” flags.)

The district also passed what the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania called “the strictest book ban policy” in the state, allowing a single person to throw library books into limbo by challenging them under a new system for evaluating “appropriateness.” Civil rights groups warned that the policy was ripe for exploitation against books about race, gender, and sexuality (as is “overwhelmingly” the case with censored books, a new PEN America report found). After the policy’s passage last year, Central Bucks received challenges against “dozens” of books, and ultimately removed a pair, both about LGBTQ+ issues.

The new policies accompanied a newly hostile environment for LGBTQ+ students, the ACLU alleged. Last fall, the civil rights watchdog filed suit on behalf of seven students in the district, alleging an atmosphere of homophobia that “has only become worse since the election of extremists to the school board last November. Before, there was an atmosphere of casual dismissal and victim-blaming of LGBQ&T students who were targets of bullying, harassment, and discrimination. Now there is outright hostility.”

The ACLU sued Central Bucks again this year on behalf of a teacher who accused the district of retaliating against him after he helped a transgender student file a civil rights complaint about bullying. And while the district poured more than $1 million into its legal defense in the ACLU suits, staff alleged another form of discrimination: unequal pay for female workers. More than 300 women who currently or previously worked for the district are suing Central Bucks for allegedly paying them less than their male counterparts.

One male employee, in particular, has enjoyed a generous salary.

This summer, in a windfall that the Philadelphia Inquirer described as “the spoils of the Bucks County culture wars,” Lucabaugh received a 40 percent pay hike from the 6-3 Republican majority board. The pay raise to a base salary of $315,000 made Lucabaugh the state’s second-best-paid superintendent, after the head of Philadelphia’s schools.

Local critics decried the raise, pointing to complaints of overcrowded classes, staffing shortages, and the alleged pay disparity for female employees.

“I am an employment lawyer,” one opponent told the school board of Lucabaugh’s proposed pay raise at a meeting this summer. “I look at contracts for a living and I have NEVER seen a change like this.”

“What has changed since Dr. Lucabaugh’s initial contract started?” resident Dana Foley asked at the same meeting, according to the Bucks County Beacon. “The emphasis on student achievement has gone down and the emphasis on fighting culture wars has gone up.  These changes have occurred on his watch and on our dime with an underwhelming and disappointing acumen.”

The new pay package passed, anyway. Lucabaugh was only two years into his five-year contract at the time. For his new pay to take effect, the board had to hire him onto a different five-year contract, due to expire in 2028. That newly extended contract would become even costlier after this month’s elections.

In the run-up to those off-year races, Bucks County became a hotbed for opposition to Moms for Liberty-style school board candidates. Some Central Bucks parents created their own organization, Advocates for Inclusive Education, while residents like Foley launched school board campaigns to unseat the district’s right-wing board. Those Democratic candidates billed themselves as saner alternatives to the headline-grabbing board that had represented Central Bucks in national media since 2021. Moms for Liberty also took a more incognito approach to the elections, tipping its hand in favor of some candidates, but only outright endorsing one in Bucks County: a longtime school official from a different district.

If the Democratic candidates’ sweep in Central Bucks came as a surprise, Lucabaugh’s resignation the following week was even less expected. As part of his new contract, he had received provisions that required him to receive at least a year’s severance if his job was terminated before 2028. The provision, commentators noted at the time, would have made him more difficult to fire, should a liberal board win office.

Instead, Lucabaugh resigned after the election—and the outgoing board agreed to pay him not just one year’s salary, but a package worth more than $700,000. As part of that deal, Lucabaugh will be exempted from district investigations into his work at Central Bucks. Lucabaugh’s initial severance package also allowed him to keep a district-issued laptop, so long as he deleted school material from the device. A judge overruled that provision last week, on the grounds that the laptop might contain evidence related to one of the ACLU lawsuits.

The incoming board members have signaled a plan to take legal action against the payout.

“The proposed Separation Agreement is unlawful on multiple fronts,” an attorney for four incoming board members wrote in a statement, going on to describe Lucabaugh’s $700,000 severance package as illegal.

“The legislature has made it clear that severance payments must be capped at the value of one year of salary and benefits.”